A Civil Defense media worker with the Bazabour center, identified as 29-year-old Hammam al Asi from Bazabour village in the south of Idlib governorate, was killed on July 17 when artillery forces which we believe were Russian fired a shell equipped with a Krasnopol laser guidance system at a house in the southeast of Sarja village in Jabal al Zaweya in the southern suburbs of the governorate as the SCD team arrived to recover the bodies of those killed and aid those injured in earlier shelling by the same forces on the same house.
SNHR notes that the Syrian- Russian alliance forces have committed a number of massacres against civilians practicing a double- tap strike policy with the aim of killing paramedic and Civil Defense personnel coming to victims’ rescue and inflicting the largest number of civilians victims, a tactic that once again indicates these forces’ brutal mindset and underlines the fact that there has been no end to their criminality and Mafiosi behavior.
SNHR notes that this shelling is a breach of the ceasefire agreement reached following consultations between the Turkish and Russian presidents, which came into effect on March 6, 2020.
Through this action, Russian forces have, without doubt, committed another violation of Security Council resolutions 2139 and 2254 which prohibit any further indiscriminate attacks, as well as violating the rules of international humanitarian law which stress the distinction between civilians and combatants. Attacks of this nature spread terror and panic among civilians, leading them to flee their lands and homes in an attempt to reach safety, and forcibly displacing them, with the number of internally displaced persons within Syria currently standing at approximately 6.5 million Syrian citizens in total. The international community should put pressure on the Syrian regime and its allies to force them to compensate the displaced victims, rehabilitate homes and vital centers, support the process of political transition, and press all parties to pursue implementation of political transition according to a strict timetable which must not exceed six months, thus enabling millions of IDPs to return homes.
